Short post: To a man, or woman, TV rightwingers have adopted one of two talking points re the Libby sentence: either pardon Libby, or commute his sentence. This narrowly framed and muted debate seeped in a rather low-key way through the Sunday morning talk shows.

Instant run-down: a somewhat nervous-sounding Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday posed the “quick question” to guest and White House spokesman Tony Snow, who also appeared on Face the Nation (CBS) with Bob Schieffer: “Will the president step in?” – Snow, not for the moment throwing ‘red meat’ to the ‘base,’ answered guardedly, “Well, that’s up to the president, and I’ll let him announce it when and if he decides to do so.”

The regular Fox panel of Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Mara Liasson, and Juan Williams presented the usual configuration of response – Williams the most rational, and Kristol by far the least, of the four. As Williams pointed out, while Dick Cheney is pushing for pardon for Libby and the pardon might appeal to the “base,” it would undoubtedly alienate swing voters, a factor in an election year. Kristol, au contraire – one of the biggest neocon Iraq-war boosters allied with the administration, and possibly the biggest aside from Charles Krauthammer -- downplayed the CIA leak case, the government, the prosecution and the judge as Kristol has consistently done. While saying that the president should pardon Libby because it would be right, and “I think he [Bush] will not let Libby go to jail,” Kristol went on to suggest that commuting the sentence, rather than a pardon, might be politically more feasible. Brit Hume declined to predict what the president will do about a pardon but also downplayed the case, and Mara Liasson, while hedging, pointed out that “the base” would like a pardon.

Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation posed the question -- will Bush pardon Libby -- to his panel, consisting today of Washington Post journalist Colbert King and Roger Simon of politico.com. King, standing as he often does on principle, said that a pardon would send a really bad message, given that Libby was, after all, convicted by a jury of obstruction and perjury. Simon pointed out – like most commentators – the potential political impact on Republicans of a presidential pardon for Libby. Simon also pointed out that “This is a president who has pardoned fewer people than any other president in the last hundred years,” and mentioned that all the usual criteria in a pardon – time already served, at least five years, and contrition – are missing in the Libby case.

NBC's Tim Russert wisely did not weigh in on this one. Aside from the fact that Russert himself testified in the Libby trial, NBC Television's footprint has been big in media obfuscation of the CIA leak from the first, a story that remains to be fully investigated even by rival media.